Lost souls
by Evy Darkwood
Summary: A one-shot about what could happen in season 10. Sam and Cas manage to cure Dean, but the price could be too high. Spoilers from S9 final


_Already done, I know. But it just came out of my head. Sorry guys. And for the record, I highly hope the producers are more optimistic than me. _

_**Lost souls**__**.**_

_It is not fair._

That is what Sam is thinking, his hands shaking and his eyes wet with tears, the lighter almost falling down on the bracer he has prepared.

_It is not right._

Dean cannot be dead, not this time. Dean can think about himself as a monster, as poison, as _wrong_, but Sam knows the truth, and he knows Dean's only fault is that he's good. He is good and protective and stubbornly brave in a world that is evil, and his hands are covered with blood, his soul is cracked by thousands of murders, and he did everything to protect his little brother, to save people who would change their side of the street just looking at him, grimacing in disapprobation.

_So it is not right than he's dead._

He can't be dead, because Sam has just learnt how to be a brother again, and he can't lose Dean now.

So, when he looks up from the fire, looking for Crowley and seeing Dean from behind the veil of tears, Sam believes that this time, this time only, the world isn't wrong for them.

"Dean..." he calls, he stands up, he reaches for his brother, and Dean smiles.

"Well well, isn't this precious." he drawls, and Sam stops, because something is wrong. Dean's smile widens, and his eyes flicker black, and Sam's fingers are on the bottle of saint water even before he can think about it.

"Who are you?" he roars. "What are you doing inside my brother?"

The thing with Dean's face chuckles and moves slightly his wrist, and Sam is slammed against a wall, feels the pain of his body hitting the wall, and the demon laughs.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy." he says with affection, walking forward with a smile. "It's me. Dean. Well, the new me, we could say." He laughs again.

"How?" breathes Sam, because this is too much, it's not possible, this can't be Dean, it can't, it's impossible. Dean grins and lifts his arm to show the Mark burned on his skin.

"How do you think Cain has become a demon?" he asks sweetly, and Sam roars and lunges forward, but Dean tackles him and pins him on the ground, with that cruel smile ghosting on his face.

"Do you want to know whose fault this is?" he hisses, and he turns painfully Sam's wrist. "_Yours._ He -the human I was- just needed you. Someone who cared and was cared for, someone who loved him." He laughed again. "He was so needy. So sadly _pathetic_. His brain could only think about the next person to protect, save Sammy, watch out for Sammy. Disgusting."

He leans forward and his eyes stare into Sam's, and they are cold and cruel and so not Dean. "You pushed him on the edge." he whispers. "You and your father and Castiel and all those bastards who kept leaving him and throwing their crap on him, until he became his worst nightmare. He used to dream about this, ya'now. Oh, I'll become a monster, I'll hurt Sammy, I'm so scared!" His voice is mocking and high-pitched, tears run down his eyes even if he clearly can't feel nothing anymore. "Sammy, Sam, Sammy Sammy _Sammy_!" he singsongs.

He pulls, and Sam hears the bones of his wrist snapping and breaking, but he can't feel the pain. It's too numb for that. Dean smiles again, and then he's gone, just like that, and Sam's alone in the bunker.

Dean Winchester is no more.

Sam finds Crowley knocked out in Dean's bedroom. When he wakes up, Crowley will swear he didn't know. He doesn't know how to help Dean.

"If you ever show up again, I'll kill you." says simply Sam. There is no emotion in those words, no heat. It's a fact, cold and real and certain as the sun fall. Crowley does not return.

It becomes an obsession.

To find Dean.

Sam knows he could cure Dean. But he has to find him.

Dean is gone without leaving a clue. Sometimes, Sam hears about a house burning, a nest of vampires full of beheaded heads on stakes, a young girl found dead in her bed, and he wonders. Sometimes he knows Dean did it, sometimes he's not sure about it, but he keeps looking.

Saving people is not the family business anymore, because there is no family. Sam becomes ruthless. He hunts to torture, to make questions. Collateral damages are not important anymore. He drinks to drown the guilt and pain. He is not kind and polite anymore, he has lost his soul once again in the depth of the darkness he's falling in, looking, searching, learning.

Sometimes Castiel helps. Castiel's clock is running out, he has to reorder Heaven before he falls... or he dies.

Sam doesn't really care.

He kills a witch only to take her books. He fucks with a Succubus and then cuts her throat and wipes the bloodied knife on the sheets. Nothing really matters anymore. Bobby is dead, Rufus is dead, Dad is dead, Kevin is dead, Charlie is gone, Garth is gone, Benny is dead, Ellen and Jo are dead, Ash is dead, Gabriel is gone, Caleb is dead, Pastor Jim is dead, Meg is dead, Jessica is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Death everywhere.

Everyone is dead.

He is alone.

Sam always prayed to God.

But God doesn't care, angels are twisted and corrupted, and there is no salvation.

Sam prays no more.

* * *

Around three months after Dean's disappearance, Castiel crawls into Sam's motel room. He has ripped his Grace out, now that Heaven is in peace, its doors closed once again, but the damage is so great that he looks almost dead.

Sam's first instinct is to leave him there, to die on the floor like a dog. The hunter has already his hand on the knob, when he realizes he can't. It is too much, even for the person he has become now that Dean is gone.

And this is _Cas_.

So Sam stays.

He takes blankets and healthy food and wraps the stupid trench-coat around Castiel's shoulders, and in some way, it's almost like Dean is here again.

Slowly, Castiel starts to feel better. He's human now. He can still hear angels in the sky, can still heal some minor cuts, but his muscles are weak and they are sore because of the pushups he forces on himself every day. He runs every morning with Sam. They practice hand-to-hand fight together, and Cas gets some practice with guns and rifles. They sit at a table and they do research. Castiel teaches Enochian to Sam, and Sam teaches Castiel how to properly use a computer.

They hunt a demon in South Carolina, and then a ghost in Indiana, and then another demon in California.

Things take a new pattern.

Sam doesn't drink so much anymore. He and Cas take a motel room, and they speak, sometimes they even smile at each other. Sam tells about the time he was little, he speaks about Jessica and the golden fish he used to have and the first time he kissed a girl, and Castiel trades stories from when he and Balthazar and Uriel and Rachel used to fly among stars and planets just for the fun of it.

Sam comes to worry about people again. Now that Castiel is here, solid and lean and stubborn as always, somehow Sam can breathe, because he's not alone anymore. Is this what Dean felt every day of his life, back then?

They hunt together, now, and Sam comes to know Castiel like once upon a time he knew his brother, he learns to read his expression and to understand his thoughts.

Sometimes people mistake them for lovers, because of the instinctive comprehension between them, because of the way Castiel easily leans on Sam and the natural position of Sam's hand on Castiel's shoulder, but it's not like that, of course. Maybe it could have happened, in another world, another life, but Sam is broken and twisted now, and Castiel has not love to give anymore, not without Dean to show him how to do it.

They never speak about Dean, but that is the implicit, unspoken deal between them. The ghost who controls their lives.

One day, they'll find him, and they'll save him. One day.

They follow trails of blood, stories and clues, sometimes they even move on Crowley's indications, but every time they arrive too late, and they found blood and corpses and devastation, but they don't find Dean. They never find him.

* * *

Except that, one day, they do.

In a whorehouse. The girls are all dead, of course. There is blood smashed on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on Dean's hands and face and clothes, bodies ripped and smashed and broken, and the scent is metallic and the air suffocating.

Sam knows what do to. He fires against his brother, and the bullet with the Devil's Trap carved on it hit Dean's forehead, making him powerless.

Sam confesses his sins above Dean's curses.

Running away to Stanford.

Trusting Ruby above Dean.

Starting the Apocalypse.

Killing all those people, both when he was soulless and when he had a soul to stain.

Leaving Dean in Purgatory.

Leaving Dean down, all those times, really. Pushing him away, running away, slamming the door on his face, refusing him without even realizing it.

_I'm sorry._

And when Sam has done, in the little church they have dragged Dean in, Castiel hits his head, and Sam falls senseless on the floor.

When he wakes up, he's tied to a chair, and Castiel is crouched down at Dean's side, a siring full of his blood on his hand and tears flowing down his face.

"What the hell are you doing?" yells Sam, but he knows, he already knows, because they've looked everywhere, and they knew from beginning the cure is mortal for the caster.

Always.

There is no way out.

Sam was ready to die, but apparently Castiel has committed himself to take his place.

Castiel looks up and he smiles.

"I'm saving you both." he says simply, and he reads the first words of the ritual.

Dean yells and then he laughs. "This is not gonna work!" he shouts. "I'll break free and I'll rip your lungs out!"

"Cas, stop! Stop it!" shouts Sam, and he pulls at his laces, his chair falls and he smashes his chin on the floor, but he can't break free.

Three times Castiel feeds Dean with his blood, and in the end Sam cannot yell anymore, he can just stare at what is going on with a numb pain wrapped around his mind.

"I can see you." hisses Dean, spitting on Castiel's face. "All the leftovers of your Grace. Disgusting." He laughs, a cold, cruel laughter. "He loved you, you know?" he asks, and Sam feels ill, because he always suspected, but to know like this, it will crush Castiel from inside.

"He almost acted upon it." smirks Dean, his eyes black and alien and yet desperate. "So many times, he went very near to admit it. After the Apocalypse, and back in Purgatory, and when he found you when you were human But then you betrayed him, pushed him away, and he couldn't. Couldn't man up enough to just fuck you for good." He laughs. "Pathetic coward."

Sam looks as Castiel just sinks the siring into his arm to take another sample of blood, pale as snow and now not crying anymore. Sam realizes he's not crying either, because the tears has somehow frozen in the corner of his eyes.

Dean grunts and he tosses his head backward when Castiel wordlessly inject the blood, his nose at inches from Dean's jugular. "It's a pity, though." Dean groans as Castiel pushes the piston down. "The things he would have done to you were enough to make a whore blush." His laughter is harsh now, he pants heavily and his eyes are green again. "Still are, actually. Just let me free and I'll show you."

He stretches, and Sam looks in horror as his brother bites Castiel's mouth in a disturbing parody of a kiss, half punishment and half raping, but Castiel just pushes away and wipes away the blood from his lower lip. His hands are shaking, and Sam finds himself pleading.

"Cas, please, don't do this." he whispers, and he recoils at his wrenched voice, because this wasn't supposed to happen. Sam had to die, not Castiel. It's not Castiel's fault if Dean is what he has become, it's Sam's.

Castiel does not answer.

He injects the blood another time, and then another, and then another. Sam's voice is so wrenched from his yells and calls that his throat hurts, and when he speaks, what comes out is a croaking sound.

Dean's voice never fades. He curses and he threatens and he swears he'll kill them. He tells them about the people he killed, the monsters he destroyed, the pain he inflicted, and every word kills Sam just a little more.

Then, slowly, the words change. Humanity shows up here and there. Sam knows what is happening, and he wishes the tears weren't trapped in his throat.

Dean is quiet now.

Castiel drags himself to Dean and lifts the last siring of blood. His expression is calm and collected, and Sam realizes with a sinking heart that this is not a spur of the moment, but that Castiel has planned this, he has always known how it must end.

"Don't do this, Cas." whispers Dean, his voice pained and his face crumbling with unbearable pain. "Please, don't. Exorcise me, instead."

Castiel leans down and places a soft kiss on Dean's forehead, a serene smile on his bloodied lips.

"I love you, Dean." he says in a low, deep voice, no doubt nor insecurity in his words, and he sinks the nail in Dean's neck.

Dean shakes and yells, but then his voice regains strength as he turns his head to face Sam. "Do it, Sam. Exorcise me." he pleas, his cheeks wetted by tears. "Save him. It's still not too late. I deserve it. The things I've done..." He shivers, and he cries, and Sam stretches the more than he can on the dump, hard floor, sprawled on it, trying to reach for Dean and unable to do it.

Castiel walks to Sam, wandering and stumbling, and he takes Sam's hand and presses it on his cheek, while Dean starts to tremble more on his chair and wriggles in pain, caught in his chains.

"Thank you, Sam." Castiel says seriously. "For everything."

He slowly sinks on the floor, and Sam knows he's dead even before he stretches out his hand to check his pulse. He finds a lightener in Castiel's pocket, and he burns away the laces and runs to Dean.

The chains fell down with a clinging sound, and Dean's body is heavy and senseless in Sam's arms, but his heart is beating and it's strong and full of life.

Sam cries and howls and clenches his brother's clothes, and he leaves the pain and the hurt take him down, because even when they do the right thing, it's still the wrong one.

It's always the wrong one.

Because they are alive, and they're together, and everyone else is dead.

Because Castiel is dead, and this time there is no God to take him back.

* * *

Time will pass.

Dean will drink, he will drink until he'll pass out in his own vomit, and Sam will be there, because that's what Dean would do in Sam's place.

Then, they will hunt. Dean will try to get himself killed a thousand times, and Sam will have his back, because it's what a brother does.

And then, time will heal some wounds, not taking them away, of course, but making them less painful. Guilt and self-hate will be there, but sometimes they'll allow Dean to smile, to punch Sam's shoulder, to make a joke, and Sam's own guilt will allow him to smile back.

Sometimes, Dean will take strangers into his bed, young men with black hair and blue eyes instead of the usual women, only that the eyes aren't blue enough, the smile isn't awkward enough, the voice isn't deep enough, but to sink into a willing body is a way like another to forget pain and guilt, at least for a while.

Sam will understand, and when it happens, he will take another room and get himself drunk, and he will watch TV and torment the scar he still bears on his hand, the one he used to chase Lucifer away, and he will wonder if there has ever been a moment when things could go differently.

But then the moment will pass, and they'll leave town, driving to the next hunt, the next monster, the next person to save.

One day, it will all end, maybe a vampire will crush their ribs, or a ghost will strangle them, or a werewolf will eat their hearts, it really doesn't matter, and no one will be there to remember them, but it is better this way.

Hunting things, saving people, the family business.

Happiness has never been in the package.

* * *

_Ok, I had to edit this again because I kinda forced my usual co-writer to read it, and she pointed out some mistakes. Sorry, guys._

_By the way, I'm not usually THIS depressing. I was actually thinking to continue this, maybe, and get Cas back. I don't know why I always end being a sadist with the poor guy. What do you think?_


End file.
